It took a Chinese housewife more than 10 years to edit already published Wikipedia articles and write her own, creating a fictional history of Russia.
About an unprecedented hoax in the history of the free encyclopedia, uncovered in China, reports bb.lv The woman used 4 fake profiles and for more than ten years “diluted” the real history of Russia with fictitious facts, characters that never existed, inventions and battles. She created an alternative history by editing hundreds of other people’s articles and writing 206 of her own opuses.
Imaginary military and economic episodes, detailed and looking as realistic as possible, skillfully complemented real events. At the same time, all descriptions were made in the dry language of an online encyclopedia, and for a long time it was extremely difficult to distinguish them from real facts. Users called the virtuoso forger “Chinese Borges.”
The author of the articles, using the nickname of one of her accounts, became known as Zhemao. Judging by the data in her now-deleted profile, she was the daughter of a diplomat who worked in Russia, studied Russian history at the university, and even, having married a Russian, received Russian citizenship.
After the exposure, Zhemao posted an apology letter on her English-language Wikipedia profile. She assured that her real motivation was to study history.
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